The unsexy, raw realities of a long-term relationship or marriage that no one warns you about:

The unsexy, raw realities of a long-term relationship or marriage that no one warns you about:

1. They’ll be the person you experience your worst days with. And it’s not just your sad moments, but the ones that are really bad. The days when you’re broke, grieving, sick, irritable, failing, overwhelmed, insecure, exhausted, or sometimes taking your frustration out on them. You don’t get to disappear around them until you’ve pulled yourself together. And that’s why who you choose matters so much.

2. There will be times when you don’t particularly like each other. Sometimes everything they do will annoy you. You’ll wonder why they chew like that or breathe like that. Sometimes you’ll feel disconnected and wonder where the excitement went. It doesn’t automatically mean the relationship is over. Sometimes you’re just tired, overwhelmed, or stuck in a routine. Sometimes you just need to find your way back to each other.

3. You’ll have to take care of the weird, embarrassing, and gross things that happen when they’re sick, old, or dying. The stomach problems. The bathroom emergencies. The tears. The strange sounds. The changes their body goes through. They’ll go from wanting to look perfect in front of you to needing your help with something they’d once have died of embarrassment over. And you’ll be there, helping them through it all, because what is love if it isn’t steadfast, persevering, and ever-present?🥺

4. A lasting relationship will require more forgiveness and more compromise than you imagined: There’ll be things you have to forgive and things you have to meet each other halfway on. But forgiveness isn’t saying, “It’s fine,” while keeping a mental record of everything they’ve ever done. And compromise isn’t one person constantly giving in just to keep the peace. You’ll have to learn how to forgive without pretending the hurt never happened, and how to make room for each other without losing yourself in the process.

5. You’ll have to renegotiate the relationship more than once: What worked when you were 25 may not work when you’re 35. The division of labour changes. Your sex life changes. Your beliefs change. Your finances change. Your priorities change. Your bodies change. Your responsibilities change. And that’s because a long, healthy relationship is made up of hundreds of little agreements you keep revisiting as life changes.

6. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to watch each other grow old. You’ll watch their grey hairs appear. You’ll rub their back because something hurts now. You’ll hold their hand in hospital waiting rooms and learn the little ways their body has changed. And while you’re watching them age, your own body is aging too—growing more tired and more fragile.

7. One of you will probably have to live through losing the other. And it’ll be painful, unfair, and devastating. But there’s something profound about loving someone for so many years that their absence leaves a hole that big in your heart. If you get the gift of decades together, you also get the privilege of having been deeply known and deeply loved by them for all those years. And when the time comes, the grief will be the price of having had a love that deep, but it will never make the loss any less painful.

8. Sometimes one person will carry more than the other: There’ll be seasons where one of you is stronger, more financially stable, more emotionally available, or simply has more to give. And later, the roles may reverse. A long, healthy relationship means understanding that you won’t always have the same capacity at the same time, and being ready to just show up.

9. You’ll both have to decide what to eat for the rest of your lives🥹😂: “What do you want to eat?” “Anything.” “Rice?” “I don’t want rice.” “So what do you want?” “I don’t even know.” And then you have this conversation approximately 4,000 times. Marriage is apparently romance, companionship, and a lifetime of deciding what to eat.🥹

10. You’ll have to keep learning the person you’re with: The person you got into a relationship with or married will not be exactly who they are many years later. Neither will you. Life changes people. Grief, parenthood, failure, success, career, loss, and faith can all change who someone becomes. And you’ll have to get curious about them all over again, and fall in love with the person standing in front of you.

11. You’ll have to protect your relationship from outside interference: Friends will have opinions. Family will have opinions. Other people will project their own experiences onto your relationship. You’ll have to learn what belongs between the two of you and what doesn’t.

12. It’ll become less about romance and more about staying beside each other: Unemployment. Long distance. Illness. Depression. Financial difficulty. Family problems. There’ll be seasons where love looks like making sure they’ve eaten, sending money when they’re struggling, sitting quietly beside them or simply saying, “We’ll figure this out.” Because a long-term relationship isn’t just about loving someone when life is good; it’s about learning how to remain a team, even when for a while, it feels like only one person is carrying the team.

13. Parenthood will change your relationship. Sometimes for the better, and sometimes in ways that are really difficult. Your attention, time, energy, money and even the way you see each other will change. But somewhere in the middle of raising these children, you have to remember that there were two of you before there were three, four or five. Before you became parents, you chose each other. And that relationship still needs to be cared for too.

In Does Love Live Here?, I write about healthy relationships and the work of staying single. It’s about building strong, healthy relationships, recognizing the signs when something isn’t right, and understanding yourself in the process too. If this thread felt very emotional, you (and maybe your partner) might find this book helpful. Comment BOOK and I’ll send it to you.

If you want a copy of my book, Does Love Live Here?, here you go.🥹🫶🏼 nestuge.com/does-love-live…